Network Programming has evolved over time to a very mature state, if you want to develop your TCP protocol using C# it is definitely easier than developing the same protocol using C++, however, network programming has two inherited challenges, the first one is building asynchronous protocol with reliable multithreaded server and non-blocking clients. This problem may look trivial given all server/client examples spread over the web; however, most of these examples introduce simplified solutions far away from what you really face in real life applications. The second problem is the fact that all .Net classes in System.Net.Sockets namespace use raw data only, as in the methods:

That means you have to deal with raw bytes rather than with int, double, DateTime … etc. moreover, if you want to send some data with variable length (like string), this will be another problem by itself.

Here, we are not saying that these problems cannot be solved, but they are time consuming problems, especially if you have large number of packets going back and forth between your clients and server, no doubt debugging such a protocol will eat up your time. In fact, most programming environments tend to save our time by introducing some kind of wizards to generate the required code for common programming tasks (like setting the properties of a button, combo box, list, … etc). Using these wizards doesn’t mean that you cannot write the code they generate, but it means you don’t need to waste your time and re-invent the wheel.

Here at Protocol Builder, we are advising you the same, don’t re-invent the wheel, i.e. you may face lot’s of TcpClient, TcpListener, NetworkStream, and Socket problems while debugging your code, most of these problems occur because of the multithreading nature of the problem, or because of the tedious and repetitive code you have to write for tens of packets which can easily make you lose concentration and fall into some kind of copy/past bugs. To get rid of these problems and save yourself considerable time, use .Net Protocol Builder to generate C# code for your protocol in a matter of minutes, moreover, it generates auto-documentation for your protocol and gives you the ability to design your protocol by building packets from many kinds of fields like double, byte[], string, and DateTime … etc, at the end you will get pure C# code for your protocol by clicking “Generate Code” …

Read more about the structure of all TCP Protocols generated by .Net Protocol Builder, or click here to download a trial version, also you may buy the standard version at really affordable price by clicking here.